By David Whisenant| September 17, 2019 at 3:11 PM EDT - Updated September 17 at 5:19 PM

SALISBURY, N.C. (WBTV) - North Carolina’s Lt. Governor made a trip to Salisbury to check out two schools that are part of the state’s only Renewal school system.

That means the Rowan-Salisbury Schools makes its own decisions on curriculum, scheduling, even how it spends state money. Officials have said that if the charter school type of flexibility is successful, it could be a model for the state.

Forest, who is also a Republican challenger seeking to win the seat of Governor from Roy Cooper, met with Superintendent Dr. Lynn Moody before visiting a classroom at Knox.

After engaging with students, Forest held a closed-door meeting with several teachers to talk about how the Renewal process is working.

“This is hard, this is hard work, and they’re taking on responsibilities that other teachers across the state don’t have to right now." Forest said.

“We believe that this work has to be designed, implemented, and created by teachers," said Dr. Moody.

The teachers who met with Forest are part of the design team that makes decisions regarding curriculum, staffing, budget, and more at each school.

“We were hoping that our teachers today would feel valued and appreciated for trying to design a new educational system," Dr. Moody added.

The Renewal plan could be implemented in other school systems, so a lot of eyes are on Rowan-Salisbury.

“For these teachers as they go throughout the school year, they’re going to adapt, they’re going top see what works well and they’re probably going to discard things that aren’t, and every year is going to be a new year, a new adaptive year for them, and so it’s kind of a beta test for them in the state and that’s what we hoped for," Forest added.

Renewal is in it’s second year, the superintendent said it would take 5 years to be fully implemented.